Mississauga waterfront proposal needs a rethink

Though there’s much to admire, the designers have overlooked the most fundamental element of successful cities - the street.

Thestar.com
May 8, 2017
By Christopher Hume

If good intentions are enough, the massive West Village development announced last week will be the next best thing on the Mississauga waterfront. According to its proponents, the 72-acre scheme will be a “vibrant and diverse community where people can live, work and play.” Pedestrian-friendly, mixed use, green and connected, not only will West Village have it all, it will help lead Canada’s sixth-largest city into its fully urbanized future.

But will it?

Though there’s much to admire in the proposal - certainly it’s a whole lot more appealing than the original landscape of Mississauga, which pretty well defined sprawl - it makes the same mistakes that we see so often in this sort of 21st-century post-industrial mega-development. Not only do its designers fear complexity, diversity and messiness, they overlook the most fundamental element of successful cities - the street.

The new planning orthodoxy holds that streets are to be avoided because they carry cars and trucks. That’s true, of course, but what planners forget is that streets can be destinations as well as thoroughfares. Toronto’s most popular districts are centred on streets - King, College, Queen, Roncesvalles. In New York, Fifth Ave., Madison Ave. and 42nd St. are big draws. The same applies in cities from London and Paris to Minneapolis and Montreal.

Planners (and developers) have also failed to understand that streets are more important than buildings. Buildings matter hugely, but the places to which we are attracted are usually more interesting for what’s in the buildings than the buildings themselves. In Toronto, the most beloved streets are most likely to be lined with unremarkable two- to four-storey boxes that offer little more than raw space, space that can be used and reused endlessly.

Renderings of West Village show a community that is halfway between urban and suburban. But in its effort to provide the best of both worlds, it could well end up with the worst. To start with, the traditional street grid of Port Credit next door is largely abandoned in favour of a series of arterials that clearly favour cars over pedestrians. Understandably, drivers prefer roads that are wide, unobstructed and straight. Walkers want something entirely different, even antithetical, narrow thoroughfares organized around short blocks. Ideally, these streets are defined by buildings that extend to the property line and offer a constantly changing spectacle of goods and services.

A community hub envisioned at the centre of West Village comes complete with a Y and other such amenities. Though preliminary, the images provided by the consortium that bought the former Imperial Oil site - the Kilmer Group, Dream, Diamond Corp. and FRAM + Slokker - show a mostly pedestrian precinct surrounded by midrise towers and a series of lowrise structures. Conceptually, it’s an extended outdoor mall, a place set apart rather, not a continuation of the streetscape of the new neighbourhood. Most will come and go by car.

The challenge will be to enliven the streets that lead to and from the hub. For most of their length they are tree-lined residential arteries, pleasant to look at and always appealing to politicians, planners, developers and architects, but not used by pedestrians who aren’t also locals.

The new community also comes with large swaths of green space, another of those features so beloved by professionals. The truth about the most popular public spaces - obvious though easily overlooked - is that what makes them irresistible is the occasion for people-watching. As the great pioneering urbanist William H. Whyte observed, “What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.”

The inescapable conclusion is that smaller, compact, connected sites - squares, piazzas, plazas and parks - are better suited to such a context than large tracts of empty space, even when they’re green. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for sports fields, dog-walking opportunities and the like, but they must be supported by density. Inexplicably, though, the park here runs along the waterfront, which means the site’s most valuable asset will go largely unused.

The absence of street-level engagement won’t bother veteran Mississaugans; for them it will be more of the same. But if the intention is to introduce something more urban into that city’s suburban landscape, the streets of West Village need a rethink. They must be places to go, not just a way to get there.